Last year, Warner Bros. Interactive had a hands-on theater demo of Project Origin, the long awaited true sequel to developer Monolith's 2005 scary shooter F.E.A.R (in fact the official name of the game had not been announced at its 2007 E3 appearance). The demo was more akin to what was seen in F.E.A.R.. it took place in an office corridor. It had some shooting of AI driven soldiers and it had a scary scene at the end.
By contrast our hands-on time with the E3 2008 demo of Project Origin was mostly a standard first person shooter, but still very well produced. The demo began with our new character, a "normal" soldier that was caught up in the nuclear blast created by scary eight year old girl Alma at the end of F.E.A.R. We were told that the E3 demo we played takes place at the beginning of the third act with the new soldier finding himself in a subway station.
As we ventured out into the ruined city we found out we were not alone. The familiar soldiers from the first game were apparently looking for our character. We got into a fire fight with a number of the bad guys and as with the first game their AI is pretty impressive. One soldier actually opened an abandoned car and used its door as a shield against our attacks. Neat.
From there we preceded through the ruined city fighting off soldiers and snipers along the way. The slow-mo action in the first game is back in Project Origin; you can use the slow-mo to more effectively shoot enemies if they swarm on you. One minor but welcome change in the game is the amount of weapons you can hold at one time. Instead of three weapons you can now hold four firearms. That means less of a sacrifice if you see a cool firearm that you want to take on.
There was one brief scary moment when we entered a movie theater that was running some kind of film and Alma appeared in her usual fleeting but terrifying way. We were told that Alma has targeted our new player character and that he may not be aware of why Alma is interested in him. Of course there will be revelations in the game's storyline that Monolith isn't talking about yet.
The final part of the E3 2008 demo had us enter a one man mech vehicle and yes, it was a ton of fun to use the auto-cannons and rocket launchers to completely decimate men on the ground as well as less powerful mech units. The last part of the level also showed off the game's destructible environments. While you won't be able to create your own paths a la Red Faction you will uncover areas that enemies might be hiding behind.
We asked about the PC version and were told that Monolith has a separate team responsible for making the PC version as good as it can be. Our contact dodged questions about system specs and whether or not it would use DirectX!0. There will also be multiplayer support but again our contact would not reveal what features it will have.
So when's it coming out? We were hoping the answer would be "this fall" but it looks like Project Origin's new date is "coming soon". We hope that doesn't mean it's been pushed back to sometme in 2009. Still the game looks like it' s coming along well and even with a small delay it's still going to be one of our most anticipated shooters.
From there we preceded through the ruined city fighting off soldiers and snipers along the way. The slow-mo action in the first game is back in Project Origin; you can use the slow-mo to more effectively shoot enemies if they swarm on you. One minor but welcome change in the game is the amount of weapons you can hold at one time. Instead of three weapons you can now hold four firearms. That means less of a sacrifice if you see a cool firearm that you want to take on.
There was one brief scary moment when we entered a movie theater that was running some kind of film and Alma appeared in her usual fleeting but terrifying way. We were told that Alma has targeted our new player character and that he may not be aware of why Alma is interested in him. Of course there will be revelations in the game's storyline that Monolith isn't talking about yet.
The final part of the E3 2008 demo had us enter a one man mech vehicle and yes, it was a ton of fun to use the auto-cannons and rocket launchers to completely decimate men on the ground as well as less powerful mech units. The last part of the level also showed off the game's destructible environments. While you won't be able to create your own paths a la Red Faction you will uncover areas that enemies might be hiding behind.
We asked about the PC version and were told that Monolith has a separate team responsible for making the PC version as good as it can be. Our contact dodged questions about system specs and whether or not it would use DirectX!0. There will also be multiplayer support but again our contact would not reveal what features it will have.
So when's it coming out? We were hoping the answer would be "this fall" but it looks like Project Origin's new date is "coming soon". We hope that doesn't mean it's been pushed back to sometme in 2009. Still the game looks like it' s coming along well and even with a small delay it's still going to be one of our most anticipated shooters.
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